A Conference Sponsored by the Center for Faulkner Studies
Southeast Missouri State University
Cape Girardeau, Missouri
October 28-30, 2010

Call for Papers
This “Faulkner and Morrison” conference invites proposals for twenty-minute papers on any topic related to William Faulkner and/or Toni Morrison. All critical approaches, including theoretical and pedagogical, are welcomed. We are particularly interested in inter-textual approaches and papers treating such topics as race, gender, class, history, humor, and technique. Proposals for organized panels are also encouraged.

In addition to the paper sessions, the conference will include a keynote address by a noted scholar, a dramatic presentation based on the works of Faulkner and Morrison, exhibits from the University’s Faulkner and Morrison collections, and a guided tour of the historical downtown Cape Girardeau and riverfront.

Expanded versions of the papers will be considered for possible publication in a collection of essays. Southeast Missouri State University Press has expressed an interest in such a collection.

E-mail a 250-word abstract by May 31, 2010, to: cfs@semo.edu.

For more information please contact: rhamblin@semo.edu or go to http://www.semo.edu/cfs/morrison/index.htm.

Don Randel, “The Values of the University”

“May you live in interesting times,” says the proverbial Chinese curse. For higher education in particular, these are indeed interesting times, as public universities grapple with furloughs, fee hikes and other difficult strategies to address the current economic meltdown. But times of crisis can also provoke innovative thinking and reassessment — and this is what humanities scholars do best. In this final talk in this year’s Public Intellectuals Forum on “Beyond the Crisis: The Future of the University,” Don Randel, president of the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s leading funder of humanities research, will discuss “The Values of the University,” moving beyond a utilitarian model of value to explore the core humanistic principles for which higher education can and should stand.

This talk begins at 5:30 pm and will be followed by a no-host reception at 7 pm. The event is free and open to all.

This event is sponsored by The UC Davis Humanities Institute and the Center for History, Society and Culture.

For more information please contact: http://publicforum.ucdavis.edu

Prized Writing Student Author Event

Prized Writing students reading from/discussing their prize-winning work.

This event is sponsored by The University Writing Program

For more information please contact: Pamela Demory, phdemory@ucdavis.edu

Davis Feminist Film Festival

A grassroots festival of short films featuring local, national, and international filmmakers. By focusing on gender issues often missing from mainstream media, the films aim to promote dialogue about realizing a more just society. Presented in collaboration with UC Davis Film Studies.

This event is sponsored by Consortium for Women and Research

For more information please contact: http://femfilmfest.ucdavis.edu

Davis Feminist Film Festival

Now in its fifth year, the Davis Feminist Film Festival is a true campus-community partnership. Held off-campus for two consecutive evenings, it is a grassroots festival of short films featuring filmmakers from around the world. Mixing narrative, documentary, and experimental styles, the films focus on issues of gender and sexuality often missing from mainstream media and they highlight the links between local, national, and international social struggle.

This event is sponsored by Consortium for Women and Research, Art Dept, Cultural Studies, Theatre and Dance, DHI

For more information please contact: beverly babcock, bababcock@ucdavis.edu

Giuseppe Mazzotta, Religion, Literature, and the Arts

Interdisciplinary conference on Religion, Literature, and the Arts.
Rationale:
The idea for this conference was prompted by a Forum on Religion and Literature to be published next year by the Journal of Religion and Literature.

A perennial dichotomy, first articulated by Plato in western thought, has divided the thinker/philosopher from the poet. Religion on the one hand (something that is true), poetics, rhetoric, and art and music, on the other hand (based on imagination), have an ongoing battle.
The discord between the two domains throughout Western history is well known. But in fact, both domains dispute sovereignty over the inner kingdom of mankind, namely: “conscience” (both moral conscience and self-awareness) as the scene in which meaning appears in human life. This dichotomy might appear utterly false in religious traditions outside the West, although the history of iconoclasm suggests otherwise. In the academy it appears that the arts have triumphed over religion that in a secular university is relegated to the periphery, but in actual fact the modern authority of literature (and the arts) was built over and alongside religion. Embedded in the work of many artists (literary, musical, artistic, etc.), we actually find a religious consciousness. The goal of this small conference is to engage in a discussion of how religion (including all major world religions) and the arts are overlapping disciplines.

Participants:
In the hopes that this will initiate an ongoing conversation (perhaps result in a DHI cluster), the participants will represent all the major religions, faculty whose academic work is multidisciplinary (crossing over between religion, art, music, performance, and literature), and graduate students who are engaged in similar interdisciplinary work. The keynote speaker will provide an overview of the issues in this debate.
Program:

9:30 Opening: Dean Jessie Ann Owens
Intro. and Overview of the Issues: Brenda Schildgen

9:45- 12:00 Panel discussion with UCD faculty addressing religion and
literature/arts and various religious practices
The following faculty have already agreed to participate:
Archana Venkatesan: Hinduism and the Arts (Comparative Literature)
Alan Williamson: Buddhism and Literature in the West (English)
Catherine Chin: Early Christianity and Literature (Religious Studies)
Break: 15 minutes
Moulie Vidas: Judaism and Literature (Religious Studies)
Olga Stuchebrukhov: Russian Literature in the Nineteenth Century and Russian Orthodoxy (Russian)
Henry Stiller: Ethnomusic and Confucianism (Music)
Heghnar Wautenpaugh: Islam and the Arts (Art History)
Discussion and questions
The panel discussion would be about 15 minutes per person, half an overview
of the issues and half focused on a particular subject.

12:00-1:00 Lunch for participants

1:00-2:00 Keynote speaker: Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta (Italian and Comparative Literature, Yale), who will be in residence at Berkeley.

Break: 15 minutes

2:15-4:15 Afternoon: 2 separate panels of 3 graduate students speaking on some aspect
of Religion and the Arts. Call for papers will go out this Fall.

Closing Remarks
Reception and performance by
St. Martin’s Camerata.

This event is sponsored by Comparative Literature, English, Music, Jewish Studies, DHI

For more information please contact: Brenda Deen Schildgen, bdschildgen@ucdavis.edu

Harriet Murav, Dovid Bergelson and Walter Benjamin in Berlin

A lecture by Harriet Murav, Prof. of Russian and Comparative Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, formerly Prof. of Russian and Comparative Literature and Chair of Comparative Literature at UC Davis. In “Dovid Bergelson and Walter Benjamin in Berlin,” Prof. Murav will explore problems of justice and injustice through as seen in and through the lives and writings of these two contemporaries and in the haunted city-scape of Berlin in the 1920s.

This event is sponsored by Comparative Literature, Classics, English, German/Russian, DHI

For more information please contact: Seth Schein, slschein@ucdavis.edu

Prized Writing Student Author Event

Prized Writing students reading from/discussing their prize-winning work

This event is sponsored by The University Writing Program

For more information please contact: Pamela Demory, phdemory@ucdavis.edu

The Vagina Monologues

UC Davis students and community members are presenting The Vagina Monologues.

This event is sponsored by Women’s Resource and Research Center, Consortium for Women and Research

For more information please contact: http://cwr.ucdavis.edu

The Vagina Monologues

UC Davis students and community members are presenting The Vagina Monologues.

This event is sponsored by Women’s Resource and Research Center, Consortium for Women and Research

For more information please contact: http://cwr.ucdavis.edu